69. How To Protect The Hard Drive From Failure

The hard drive is the most fragile element within the entire computer system. The average hard disk life with spinning disks is about three or four years, even though the hard drive manufacturers built them to have a much longer life period.

One of the most important factors that contributes to shortening the life of a hard drive is a high operating temperature. Operating systems or hardware BIOS will alert the user that the hard drive is overheating. This factor is especially critical in laptops with hard drives that are fitted into only the caddy or enclosed into the aluminium foil. Certain Acer laptop models have this design, and in my opinion, it is better to use the hard drive without any enclosure if at all possible. On desktops, the temperature than the hard drive can reach can be a critical level when there are two hard drives and one is located on top of the other. Usually, the top hard drive fails more frequently, which indicates overheating.

The other method that can secure the hard drive from electrical damage is by using a filter. A filter can easily fit into a desktop computer. A filter is nothing more than a pair of big capacitors and a few small capacitors soldered in a module that connects power to the hard drive. In some cases, this filter can save the life of your hard drive. The best confirmation of this fault or power supply fault is repeated hard drive failure. For example, the original hard drive failed and you replaced it with a new one. Then, the new hard drive also failed. This is a power supply failure to blame, or power adaptor failure on laptops. This can be illustrated even with oscillograms.The next is protection against power surges. Here probably the best way is to buy a surge protector from the shop.

Have your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below.